[Eric Rougier has actually had success shooting 360x180 panos with his iPhone and a fisheye attachment][1], but Rougier is a 360x180 shooting phenom who can do these things handheld. :) Generally speaking, this is not a type of shooting for the faint of heart, or the super-low-budget. The simple fact that you typically want to rotate the camera/lens combination around the no-parallax point to get a good stitch tends to mean specialized equipment. For a very low budget, you're not going to get fantastic quality. The cellphone + fisheye attachment might work out, or you might consider [using a mirrored ball][2] and do [the lightprobe thing][3] and creating a pano with the free [Ornament][4] PS plugin from Flaming Pear ([docs][5]), but it won't equate to doing this kind of work with a dSLR and proper fisheye lens. [1]: http://www.fromparis.com/technical/iphone-fisheye-unexpensive-spherical-panoramas.html [2]: http://petapixel.com/2011/06/20/how-to-shoot-a-360-degree-panorama-using-a-christmas-ornament/ [3]: http://gl.ict.usc.edu/HDRShop/tutorial/tutorial05.php [4]: http://www.flamingpear.com/ornament.html [5]: ftp://ftp.cip.cu/Software/Diseno_Web/Adobe%20Photoshop%20Plug-ins/Flamingpear/Freebies/Ornament%20Guide.html